by Carmella Guiol
I never knew I felt a connection to the pressure cooker, until yesterday. I’m an ocean away from where I grew up, visiting my dad on the sailboat he calls home. Over our typical lunch of bread and cheese, we wondered what to do for dinner (in true European style, always thinking about our next meal). I suggested the stew; it was an easy meal, and it would feed us for a few days. We both agreed it would be a good way to use of some of the random vegetables we had floating around our kitchen.
Growing up, my father would make some incarnation of his famous “stew” at least once a week. Whatever vegetables were on hand got tossed in, a handsome amount of liquid to cover them, some meat or sausage thrown in for good measure, a dusting of herbs and salt, and that’s all there was to it. It is the perfect one-pot dish, one that my dad learned while sailing and having to cook in tiny galleys. Plus, it made this terrific racket, as if we had a steam engine chugging through our kitchen, or an airplane revving its motor on the runway. “Fasten your seatbelts, we are ready for take-off!”, it seemed to scream. My sister and I would dance around the kitchen with our hands covering our ears as it wailed plaintively for as long as my dad deemed necessary.
As kids, we were taught to eat what was in front of us with no complaints, though we always managed to find something in the stew that was not to our liking. “Why is there a leaf in my dinner?” my sister would ask, fishing out a bay leaf. “I don’t like these round things,” I would whine, lining up capers on the side of my plate. But it was the best way to get us to eat our vegetables and we usually went back for seconds, regardless of our protests. Today, I’m twenty-five and a veritable vegetable enthusiast. The stew is one of my favorite dishes, although I’ve never attempted to create it without my father by my side.
In the tiny kitchen aboard the boat, I set to work. I searched around the cupboards and in the depths of the fridge to see what I could salvage, understanding placidly that no matter what I did, it would be delicious. I found a few sturdy carrots, three old potatoes with shoots blossoming from the eyes, some limp celery, a lone leek, and several perfectly respectable onions. I cut them up and threw them into the pot. There were some dried herbs in a bag on the counter that he must have picked up at the market a few weeks ago: oregano gone to flower and a bunch of rosemary, both of which grow in wild abundance on the dry coastal hills nearby. I crushed a handful of each and sprinkled them on top of the growing mound. Then, I poured in some dry lentils and let my dad do the rest; the mechanics of the pressure cooker scare me and I never know how much liquid to put in.
I left on my jog just as my dad turned on the gas stove to start simmering the soup. I know exactly what came next; I’ve seen him do it a million times. While he waited for the vegetables to soften and the juices to mingle in the pot, he fried up the sausages in a skillet, being sure to cover his pan with a grease screen to avoid the inevitable splatter. In went a can of diced tomatoes, several cups of water, and a dash of red wine. Finally, the sizzling sausages were speared and stirred into the pot. When all that was said and done, he secured the lid tightly, turned up the heat, and went back to whatever he was doing while he waited for the magic to happen.
As I approached the glowing boat, I slowed my pace to a halt. In the dark night, the smell of onions and sausages wafted out to greet me, the familiar whistle of the pressure cooker floating out from the galley window – music to my ears! All of a sudden, I was eight years old again, dancing around our yellow tiled kitchen, being of no help at all while my dad put the finishing touches on our dinner.
Carmella Guiol is a community food activist and writer from Miami, Florida. Read her blog: renouncerejoice.blogspot.com.
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